Rethinking Israel

Israel Finkelstein is perhaps the best-known Israeli archaeologist in the world. Renowned for his innovative and ground-breaking research, he has written and edited more than 20 books and published more than 300 academic papers. He has served as the director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology and is the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of Archeology in the Bronze and Iron Age at Tel Aviv University. For the past two decades, he has been co-director of the Megiddo Expedition and is currently co-director of the Mission archéologique de Qiryat-Yéarim.

His work has greatly changed the face of archaeological and historical research of the biblical period. His unique ability to see the comprehensive big picture and formulate a broad framework has inspired countless scholars to reexamine long-established paradigms. His trail-blazing work covering every period from the beginning of the Early Bronze Age through the Hasmonean period, while sometimes controversial, has led to a creative new approach that connects archaeology with history, the social sciences, and the natural and life sciences. Israel Finkelstein is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and a correspondant étranger of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.

Professor Finkelstein is the recipient of the prestigious 2005 Dan David Prize for his radical revision of the history of Israel in the 10th and 9th centuries BCE. In 2009, he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2010 received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lausanne. He is a member of the selection committee of the Shanghai Archaeology Forum, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 2014, his book The Forgotten Kingdom was awarded the esteemed Prix Delalande-Guérineau by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris.

This volume, dedicated to Professor Finkelstein’s accomplishments and contributions, features 36 articles written by his colleagues, friends, and students in honor of his decades of scholarship and leadership in the field of biblical archaeology.